AUBURN, Alabama -- The first national coaching award has arrived for Auburn head coach Gus Malzahn.

Malzahn was named the Home Depot Coach of the Year early Wednesday morning, an award that will be presented during the Home Depot College Football Awards show at 7 p.m. Thursday on ESPN.

Already named the SEC's Coach of the Year by the Associated Press, Malzahn is also a finalist for the Eddie Robinson Coach of the Year award and the Liberty Mutual Coach of the Year award.

Handed a massive rebuilding project after Auburn collapsed to its worst season in 60 years in 2012, Malzahn has engineered a turnaround that is tied for the biggest in college football history, steering the Tigers to a 12-1 record, their third SEC Championship in 10 years and a spot in the BCS National Championship against undefeated Florida State.

"I don't think anybody in this room, probably with the exception of those guys that put on the jersey every Saturday, there probably wasn't thinking we'd be sitting here," Auburn athletics director Jay Jacobs said last week. "Particularly coming out of a spring where you didn't know who your starting quarterback was going to be and a team that had finished 3-9 and just the confidence and where these guys are from a competitive standpoint, that's why he should be the national coach of the year."

Malzahn, the only first-year head coach to win an SEC Championship in the 22-year history of the conference title game and the first SEC Coach in 66 years to win an SEC title in his first season, hit the ground running.

It took Malzahn only two days to hire coordinators Rhett Lashlee and Ellis Johnson, a month to hire an experienced veteran SEC coaching staff, tabbed Ryan Russell to renovate the Tigers' strength and conditioning program and tightened up discipline.

By the time the spring ended, Auburn still had questions -- particularly at quarterback -- but after Nick Marshall won the starting job in August, Malzahn steered a team that kept improving, shaking off an early loss to LSU to beat Georgia, Alabama and Missouri in memorable fashion down the stretch behind the nation's best running game and a bend-but-don't-break defense that seems to come up with the right stop at the right time.

"I don’t know if I’ve ever had a team come as far as we have. The very first game, we were an average-at-best team. We were a work in progress probably the first half of the season," Malzahn said Sunday night. "Our players bought in to what we asked and they worked extremely hard and they earned the right to get here."

For his efforts, Auburn rewarded Malzahn with a six-year contract extension and a leap in salary to $3.85 million, a contract that includes a $250,000 raise in each subsequent year.

"This where I want to be," Malzahn said Sunday night. "I love Auburn. You start hearing rumors about this stuff, I didn’t want our players or coaches or fans to wonder how I felt. I wanted to be here and I’m one blessed guy to be the head coach of the Auburn Tigers."